


The Anthropic Principle

by Syberina5



Series: The Universality of Quantum Physics Projects [4]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Julia Roberts movies, The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, WWLD?, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 15:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16578740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syberina5/pseuds/Syberina5
Summary: Title: The Anthropic PrincipleWord Count: 4,780Summary:If you call without a hitch her shipping a completely demolished toaster—ribbon, card, and all—back to him…Disclaimer: It’s hard to keep the preceding parts of the story true given the retrospective-prospective perspective (Disclaimer disclaimer: not that fun a tongue twister).Author’s Note: Another bizarre Sam-Becketting of the original, “Schrödinger’s Child.” Other points: 1. I had no idea this would get so long. 2. This one has more scene and dialogue than all the others put together. 3. I don’t bash characters in my writing because I dislike them personally. Ibelievein not violating character for author agenda. That said, this is the meanest I have ever been to Piz as a character.





	The Anthropic Principle

_Her wedding had gone off without a hitch and a perfectly bland toaster from their registry—Piz had put it there _unironically_ (“What? We need a toaster. You killed that last one with the chocolate chip cookie fiasco!”—which, okay, not one of her better ideas; there had been a lot of wine with Mac involved)—had arrived with his name on it._ If you call without a hitch her shipping a completely demolished toaster—ribbon, card, and all—back to him and him showing up at the ceremony. 

The bastard hadn’t even said anything just stood at the end of the isle waiting for all eyes to turn to him—of course they had—and smirking. 

When the Justice of the Peace in her black robe and severe bob stumbled over a word because she kept glancing down the path to where Veronica in her heavy white dress had entered, Veronica also glanced that way. She caught him out of the corner of her eye and pressed her lips together. What _the fuck_ was he up to? Was he really intending to raise his voice at the whole “Speak now or forever hold your peace” part? _Of course he was!_ Logan Echolls did not do things by halves and ruining her wedding had the potential of a _pièce de résistance_. So, while Wallace was finishing the sweetly poem Piz had picked out for him, Veronica made her final decision. 

The venue was lovely. That was actually one of the things she’d enjoyed planning. The grassy knoll just off the beach, the gauzy fabrics blowing in the wind, the surf rushing off the rocks. 

Beautiful, yes. But it made for a terrible get away. 

What was she supposed to do? March straight up the isle and hope she could hip-check Logan out of the way before he dragged her into his arms in front of the entire Piznarski clan? Wasn’t it bad enough she couldn’t go through with it, bad enough that she was going to leave him at the altar, did she have make out with the man who had beat him to a bloody pulp to his face? So that really only left the beach and the water. 

As soon as Wallace was done Veronica grimaced, squeezed Piz’s hands where they were nestled in hers, and said, “I really am sorry,” before dropping his hands. She used both of her hands to lift up her skirt and head around the arbor with all its ruffling tulle and waxy blooms. She stopped only to take off one shoe and then a step later the other, throwing them down on the ground even though Piz and her father and maybe Wallace were calling after her. She more slid than stepped down the short, soft cliff to the sand. Once she was on her feet again she could finally make out Logan’s laughter over the rushing in her ears and the rustling of her dress. 

If she was going to make it over the rocks to the open beach beyond where she’d flag down a car and get home she was going to need to be able to see her feet. Diving into the ocean and swimming around was out of the question. The dress was too heavy dry let alone wet. Even without it she would have a hard time swimming far enough out to avoid the rocks with the tide coming in. The good news was that the MammoMax had never worked. She didn’t have to do much to get the dress up over her breasts and then her head—she would have never gotten all the fussy closures on her own; it had taken Mac, Wallace, and her dad to get her into the thing. She left it in the sand too. Sure the tide was coming in but it sounded like her father wasn’t far behind her and no matter how pissed he was he wasn’t going to leave a dress that had cost that much on the ground. 

She was scaling the rocks in the full slip that had been under her gown. It was enough to keep her from being irritated by the layering of the dress but didn’t have a bra in it—Patricia had done an amazing job building a lot of that into the bodice; thank god for seamstresses. She went up fast, was starting down and still steadfastly refusing to cast so much as a hair over her shoulder. When she got down on the other side she started to run—no point sticking around when she’d only have to explain why she’d walked out on the wedding she’d spent six months planning. She was almost to the parking lot when a convertible screeched into it.

_Logan._

“Any idea where the Regent Beverly Wiltshire is?”

“Shut up,” she spat as she yanked open the passenger door.

“What? I thought we were trying to see how many Julia Roberts movies we could reference,” he continued to quip and he peeled out onto the road. “This look,” he nodded at her thin slip, “not going for _Sleeping with the Enemy_ ”— _The innuendo-ing bastard!_ —“or _Steel Magnolias_? I figure if I break down on the PCH, we can get _Mystic Pizza_ easy.”

“I hate you,” was said with as much malevolence as she could muster. 

But he only laughed. “If only that were our problem, Mars, if only. Be sure to check _Ocean’s Eleven_ off the list now.”

And, yeah, it wasn’t the problem. If she’d been able to hate him that fight wouldn’t have ended him between her legs. If she’d been able to hate him the Sorokins wouldn’t have had any reason to toss him in that hole. If she’d been able to hate him Logan would be in prison for killing Lilly and Aaron never would have locked her in a fridge and set it on fire— _and who the fuck does that; in what twisted kind of mind that that sound like a good way to torture the location of video tapes out of someone?_ —Cassidy would have killed her on that rooftop and gone back downstairs to Mac. 

There was no happy ending in hating him; not that she’d been able to find much of a happy ending loving him either.

“Alright, Erin, which hovel would you like me to drop you off at?”

 _Oh, crap._ “Just… keep driving.”

“Ohhh,” he squealed like they were back beside the pool where he’d taught her how to perfect her cherry bomb, “ _Conspiracy Theory_ a classic despite Mel Gibbon’s not-so-closeted antisemitism. Bonus: Patrick Stewart plays a bad guy. We _are_ going to get all of these yet. I can feel it.”

He’d driven and eventually they’d landed at some cabin he knew about near San Bernardino. He’d disappeared into the kitchen with a mumbled offer to make herself comfortable. She’d opened drawers and closets until she found clothes and a land line that seemed to work. She dialed her dad’s office phone. Knowing he wouldn’t be there to pick up.

“Hey Dad. I’m okay. I promise I just… I panicked. I panicked and I thought, ‘What would Lilly do?’ and the only answer I could come up with was ditch the dress and run. I’m sorry. I know I hurt him and I know I hurt you and— _God_ —the money. That’s six months of listening to me talk about flowers you are never going to get back, old man,” she joked, trying to lighten the blow. “I love you. I just… I need a couple of days to figure it out.”

“Rescheduling already?” He was leaning against the door frame.

And she thought about it. Was she still going to try to be married to Piz after this?—Which takes some explanation: Technically they were already married, had gone to the courthouse and said words with a justice of the peace on his lunch break because Veronica had lost her health insurance and she has a tendency to get a little injured and they were going to get married anyway just… later. Only she and Piz and his HR rep knew anything about it. And it hadn’t been a big deal, hadn’t been on the edge the same way because it was practical. It wasn’t saying forever even if we cheat on each other (which Veronica had already done— _thrice_ ). It wasn’t saying having kids is within the realm of expectation. 

And where had all these thoughts been when Piz had lost the ring on their ski-weekend and only successfully proposed—apparently he’d been trying for a while—because he’d needed her help to find the ring? Where had they been when they were talking dates and colors and that endless debate about flower meanings? Where had they been when she’d been riding to Logan’s rescue and then riding Logan?

“Jesus Mars, it’s not supposed to be a trick question,” he was still leaning there and even through the haze of her sudden panic and confusion she could see it wasn’t casual anymore. It was coiled, his muscles ready to run or leap or—more likely—deflect. 

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Go back to Piz? Me neither. He’s really not my type.” And now that she was looking his whole body was on alert. “Looks like we can cross _My Best Friend’s Wedding_ off the list now too—though I really wasn’t expecting to be the Rupert Everett in this one.”

“Get married.” She turned back to the window, not wanting to see any more of his feelings, having too many of her own. “How could anyone who has seen all the stuff we have ever want to get married? It’s supposed to mean something, right? Marriage. But what did it mean to Jake, to my mom, to—” she cut herself off.

“It certainly meant jack-all to the Casablancases and Aaron…to him it was like the rope on a tether ball. Just a way to keep people spinning back around so you could smack ‘em again,” and she caught his mimed the action out of the corner of her eye.

She nodded, still not wanting to see what might be on his face, focusing harder on the trees beyond the glass. 

“But I think it means what you make it. If it’s a business transaction” he said from nearer by, “so be it. If it’s a temporary affair,” closer still, “so be it. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t people for whom it isn’t a status symbol, a means, but an acknowledgement that, no matter what, each of you intends to be there for the other person,” he finished standing next to her, “come hell or high water.” He brushed a single finger down her shoulder. “For better or worse.” She looked at him, was not able to look away, “In sickness and in health.”

“‘Til death do us part,” she murmured thinking of when death had been upon them both in that bitter hole Gory had tossed them into, of when Moe had attacked her, when he’d given up on fighting, when they’d been on the roof with Beaver and how good it was in between. That summer before college when it had been just them and none of the Neptune drama, few cases, little angst; it had been good (even with the funerals). Even if they’d lost it soon after. 

_Better_ and _worse._ There was no “or” about it. Maybe that wasn’t true for everybody, but it was certainly true for _them_. It didn’t really seem to be true for Piz. She was the worst thing that had ever happened to him and he didn’t know the half of it. Not about the sex tape, not about Logan, not about her job. Maybe that was why it had been so easy to stay with him, to say yes, to just keep going along because he didn’t need to know the worse. She couldn’t keep leaving all the details out like that though if they were married. It would really make her Lianne and she wasn’t prepared to go any further down that path than she already had.

“So what’s next for Veronica Mars, intrepid girl detective?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue.”

“Well, you could go on your honeymoon,” he considered, “with or without the groom.”

“Ugh, no thanks the last thing I want to do is spend a week in Berlin at a music festival where every band—” all she could see was Piz in her head gushing that each band was amazing and not to be missed and there was no way she wouldn’t do the same while listening to the actual bands. “No, that was Piz’s dream trip.”

“Aw, what a good little wifey you almost were,” he tweaked her nose and she shoved his hand away.

Rolling her eyes, she crossed away from the window. _There was a kitchen somewhere. Maybe a can of olives or something._

“Well,” he said from behind her, “you could stay here, ponder life’s deep meanings in the mountains. Nobody would bother you.”

“No,” she returned quickly. “Thanks,” to soften the blow.

“You’d go crazy up here,” he laughed, “with no cases to solve.” She tried to glare at him while searching the cupboard only to see his eyes go lascivious and hear his voice drop, “Though I’m sure you could do plenty of _resting_ with the right _encouragement._ ”

She felt her body clench with a sort of muscle memory. Sure Logan could deliver what his voice was promising, she forced herself to keep rifling through the cupboards for something to eat, maybe enough to make a meal out of.

“So what would yours have been,” he asked.

“Hmm?” _Oh, fancy olives and anchovies._

“The trip you’d have planned. A non-German music festival? A non-baseball themed vacation?” his eyes twinkled while he pulled out bowls and plates for her finds. 

She looked down, “Italy.” Ignored the can opener in his hand, “cooking lessons in some warm city in Italy where I could eat my way from one side to the other in a week and go home feeling like I saw every single thing there.” She took a jar of who-knew-what and turned away to wrestle it open leaving him the cans.

“A flight to Rome can’t be so different from a flight to Berlin,” he half shrugged while spinning the crank in his long fingers. “Call the airline, change it. Gain forty pounds in Italy and never come back. Be one of those old ladies in black who swats at rude men on the street.” He laughed at his own image. “I would pay money, Mars, cash money to see that.”

She smiled too, the lightness, the goodness of them finding its footing and letting go of the confrontation and animosity that had showed up with his gift. 

After they’d devoured all the jars and cans worth opening and the bottle of wine Logan had procured from somewhere Veronica was on the phone to the airline and Logan swiped it out of her hands and ran away to tell the operator where to send her. When he came back the line was dead and she couldn’t cajole, insult, or tickle it out of him. She stopped just shy of trying to kiss it out of him and pulled herself away to get on the phone and lock herself in another room, and then, afraid Logan would come try to talk to her through the door, she hid in the closet as well.

“Hello,” she said into the receiver chomping gum she didn’t have. “This is Dolores with United Airways calling for a Stoss Piznerski.”

“ _Uh, yeah. Yeah, that’s me._ ”

“Good evening, Mr. Piznerski. I am calling to confirm your ticket on UA871 tomorrow from San Diego International to Berlin Brandenburg with a connection at Dulles International. Can you confirm your intention to make this trip?”

“ _I…. What?_ ”

She sighed as though she had explained this eight different times today alone, “Your ticket is one purchased as a pair that is no longer following the same flight path. As an added measure of security we call ticket holders to confirm if the remaining party intends to fly,”

“ _Oh, I… No. I guess not. It was supposed to be our honeymoon._ ”

“I am so sorry for your loss sir, my condolences.”

“ _No! I mean, thank you, but no. She’s not dead. We just… didn’t… didn’t get… I t’s complicated but mostly we didn’t get married._ ” It was his turn to sigh and Veronica put a hand over her mouth to keep from making some involuntary noise of remorse for his obvious pain. “ _Wait, does this mean that she cashed her ticket in. No, you said… where’d she change her destination to?_ ”

“I don’t have that information available, sir.” _True enough… at least for now, Echolls._

“ _Oh, huh. I guess that means she meant it when she ran away._ ” _Oh Piz._

“I’m sorry, sir. Did you want me to cancel the ticket now? What about this honey, I’ll give you the call center number and you call back when you’ve had a little time to decide what you want to do. Okay?”

“ _Oh, yeah. I guess. Thanks, um…_ ”

“Dolores. Have a better night and for what it’s worth I’d still go on that trip. You already planned it, right?” She gave him the number and tipped her hand to her dad by texting him, _Don’t help him find my ticket. <3 V._

With any luck her dad would get back to her with the location she was actually going to and she could rub Logan’s face in it. Of course she could also just call the airline back, but that would be too easy.

Later, working on the second bottle of wine and starting to think a make-out session might be the only way to get the destination out of him, another text message came through on Logan’s phone: _Italy? I hope you know what you’re doing._ A minute later another came in and had her smiling.

_Who’s your daddy?_

She typed back _You_ and deleted all the messages before sneaking the phone back into Logan’s pocket. 

She was running out of options to get him to spill.

The next day he drove them back to civilization. Piz seemed to have left their apartment and caught his flight to Berlin which meant she could pack up for her trip in peace. She demanded that Logan help her since he was still the only one who knew where she was going. She caught him sneaking both sweaters and bikinis in and out of her bag so he wasn’t really being helpful. 

“You sure you don’t want Mac or Wallace to meet you out there?” he asked while kissing a stuffed animal she kept tucked on the bedside table—one Lilly had given her for Valentine’s Day almost ten years before—and laying it in her bag. “You know they would.”

“They already gave up so much time for all of this,” parties and showers and dress shopping and fittings, and making party favors and that stupid everlasting debate about the flowers. “I can’t ask them to cut and run for a whole week.”

“Yeah, I guess not everyone can be as gloriously responsibility-free as I am.”

“True,” she said picking up the little hippo in a tutu, holding it close, while he turned to her sock drawer of all things— still clearly trying to throw her off the scent.

“Well, since you are so responsibility-free and you obviously endorse wherever it is I am going., why don’t you sign up for the babysitting duty you keep trying to foist off of my friends.”

“I don’t do babysitting. And it’s not that you can’t handle the crude Italian men who will undoubtedly hit on you. It’s…” he saw the hippo in her hand, “you’ve been through a thing. You just called off a three-year relationship and it was kind of my fault. You’re not going to deal with it if… _God, Veronica,_ keeping my hands off you last night was hard enough. Watching you eat Italian food for a week might kill me, actually kill me.” He sighed, took the hippo out of her hands and put it in the bag again. “I don’t want that to be what we do.”

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better,” he said, defeated, collapsing onto the bed.

“It was my fault. I demolished that toaster and _sent it to you_ —”

“It was an epically destroyed toaster,” he laughed over her.

“—and then when you showed up I didn’t ignore you, I didn’t pull Piz aside and talk to him, I ran—”

“But that’s Veronica: 101. He should have seen that coming.” 

“—I stripped out of my wedding dress, scaled rocks barefoot, and then climbed into my ex-boyfriend’s car,” she pointed out.

“Don’t malign Lucile,” he returned, determined to make light.

“This wasn’t your fault, Logan. You didn’t make me run, you didn’t,” she felt her insides hitch—she’d never acknowledged it out loud before, “make me sleep with you, and you certainly didn’t keep me from breaking up with him on any of the three very apparent occasions when I should have.”

“Wow.”

“Ugh. You’re going to do this aren’t you?” she said slouching down on the bed next to him.

“I have no quips. I am quipless. I feel like we should celebrate,” he said sitting up. “There was so much self-actualization in that speech I think _my_ therapist is proud.”

“That’s not what that means.”

“ _Psssht_ , close enough.”

“See?”

“See what? Your very sexy smirk?” he drew a finger down her face. “Yes I do, so knock it off.”

“No, that Wallace and Mac aren’t the only ones who are good friends to me, aren’t the only ones who help me through things.”

“Ha,” he said and looked away. “Veronica Mars doesn’t need help.”

“Yeah, I do,” she took his hand, “and you do.”

They spent a week in Italy but didn’t have sex once. They held hands, made out in plazas, cooked food in kitchens, and ate everything Veronica could get her hands on. And it would have been easy to leave it at that. But every time Veronica thought, _Don’t rock the boat, just keep it like this for as long as you can,_ she thought back to the hell fury that had been inside her, that she unleased on that poor, unsuspecting toaster and forced herself to say something real to him.

“I’m worried I’m becoming my mother.”

“I was so worried you were becoming your mother.”

“It was just easier not to tell him. It is always easier to just keep it all to myself.”

“Lilly could be such a bitch but I loved her so much—I think she knew about… God, she must have known Duncan thought we were siblings. 

It went on like that with him reciprocating in and amongst the one-liners, in and amongst the food and wine and late mornings wrapped together—their pajamas intact. 

She’d been afraid that when they got off the plane it was going to be just like the summer before freshman year. But it wasn’t. 

All those trails of conversations, like cooked spaghetti noodles tossed out at random, had laid a new layer of brickwork around their old and crumbling foundations.

“Can we make this when we get back?”—a seemingly innocuous question—was one of the first to go down and led to noodle after noodle of what they did, and did not, wanted their new relationship to be. 

So it wasn’t much of a shock to their relationship when they found out they’d made the tabloids while on their trip. There were a few pictures of them out on the palazzo eating dinner, holding hands, walking home. Nothing terribly noteworthy except Veronica’s hand was on her stomach in every single one and—okay, alert the media—she’d had a lot for dinner—and every other meal—so she had a bit of a pooch. Of course rather than “American Overeats” they’d been titled “Secret Celebrity Babymoon?”

They’d been spared the bit of it because most of the people who cared vehemently didn’t really have Logan’s number. Since Veronica had handed her phone to Mac on her wedding day and not seen it since, so there wasn’t a whole lot they could do until the couple returned. 

In short succession, her father stood staring at both her and Logan disapprovingly for minutes solid—we’re talking nary a blink—Mac forced Veronica’s fully-charged-but-off phone into her hand and refused to be responsible for the consequences, and Wallace covered the door like a bouncer refusing her entry. Only she wanted to leave. Her father’s apartment had filled quickly and with lots of reproving looks. Wallace would only be moved by a call to Piz to let him know that she was back and would talk to him about the baby— which wasn’t unless it was the _immaculate conception of the spaghetti monster_.

“You expect me to believe that you ditched our _wedding_ for no real reason? Because that doesn’t make any sense, Veronica!” Piz’s hands were flung out as though he were directing some bombastic, dark symphony, his hair shaking like those parodies of Beethoven. 

“I’m sorry. I know you don’t understand. But I wasn’t ready to get married, Piz. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

“We’re already married!”

“I— _whumph_ ” she was going to have difficult time putting this into words. “That… wasn’t _real_ though.”

“How is a marriage license not real?”

“To me, Piz. It wasn’t real to me. It was just more paperwork, a hoop to jump through, just practical. I was… I wasn’t thinking of it as a marriage any more than I really thought about us living together. There wasn’t a lease, I wasn’t moving any furniture in. I could move out, if I needed to. I guess… I just realized that it was real, it was permanent, that if I actually said, ‘I do’ I would have to… I would have to really _be_ married. Forever ever.”

He looked at her for a minute. She thought that perhaps she’d gotten through to him, that he’d understood, but no.

“That’s what it always meant. When I asked you to marry me that is what it meant. When we planned a wedding for months with caterer’s and photographer’s and _tuxes_ that was what we were talking about!” he continued, conducting vigorously.

“But it wasn’t _real_. It was all hypothetical, a game like… like make-believe. You know?” Piz kept looking at her silent so she fumbled through the idea. “Like when you’re a kid and you play dress up and pretend you are doing grown-up things like going to work and grocery shopping and… and, well, getting married.”

He continued to just stare at her, somewhat horrified. “Is it that,” he sighed, finally speaking, “is it that the baby is Logan’s?”

“ _No,_ ” she vociferously exclaimed. _Way to sell it, Veronica._

“So there is a baby!” he pointed at her in triumph as he shouted in her face.

From somewhere behind her maniacal laughter erupted. _Fuck._ “You know what you did wrong there, Bobcat?” he asked mirthfully.

“ _Shut up,_ ” she spat and turn to march determinedly out—much as she had at her wedding.

“You accepted the premise of the question.”

It was no use. For a couple of months Piz kept asking Wallace what he thought were covert questions about the state of Veronica’s eating habits and wardrobe. 

Of course it became a running joke. Veronica’s due date was set comically far out, likening her to an African elephant. Years in the future she would finally be delivered of the bouncing baby boy they were calling Isaac. Isaac was very talkative and the frequent tummy rumblings were just his contributions to the conversation. 

Wallace did not find it terribly funny, but he was also the only one really having to deal with Piz’s honest belief that Veronica was keeping her pregnancy and therefore likely _his_ child a secret. 

Eventually Piz’s certainty dimmed and it became clear that, if there ever was a pregnancy, it had not made it to term. Of course, being Piz, he still sort of thought that she must have miscarried their child. The only real evidence he had for this was that he somehow heard mentions of the would have been child Isaac. A photo of a birthday cake even made it on to Mac’s Facebook. It got several likes.


End file.
